David,

"Can you please quote your source for this amazing revelation?"

Sorry I cannot be too specific, I heard it many years ago, either on Israel-radio or Israeli-TV.

"this is what Ben Gurion read:..."

That cynical socialist old fox could have read aloud anything that would forward his goals, but it doesn't imply that he meant any of it. Better judge him by his actions - Yes he wanted Jews to make their home in Israel, but only if they were young, healthy and socialist. The rest of them he was happy to leave for the Nazis. I suppose it is also a sign of strong Jewish faith to murder one's [Jewish] political rivals by shooting them as they swim empty-handed in the sea, as he ordered without remorse in the Altalena case.

Theodore Herzl, "the spiritual father of the Jewish State" only considered forming a Jewish state as his 2nd-best option. He also pursued the option of forming it in Uganda rather than in Palestine. His first preference was for the Jews to assimiliate, convert to Christianity and disappear as a recognisable entity. It was only following the Dreyfus trial and pogroms in Russia that he came to believe that it would be practically impossible and therefore the Jews should have a state of their own.

Dear csteele,

My father and his family died in the Holocaust. An Austrian Jew, he fought in the French Army. He was one of those to whom Australia granted a visa, then overturned it without letting my parents know. He had the option of converting to Christianity. Although a secular Jew in every way, he refused: "I will not desert my people." Being a toddler, I was too young to remember him. My mother and I were POWs.

My mother was an Australian Catholic. I was raised a Catholic. She married a senior British colonial officer when I was a child. After leaving school, I spent seven years in Malaysia. This was during the Emergency; I personally witnessed terrorist attrocities. At fifteen, I stood amongst the dead and dying after terrorists how thrown hand-grenades into a packed theatre. These victims were familes with their young children.

I was eventually to end up in academia.

Dear Yuyutsu,

If a people have to fight a defensive war from on their own soil, they are already in dire trouble. A couple of OLO members have stated that they would not agree to fighting a defensive war beyond the Australian border; undoubtedly, they also believe that any fighting would only occur between the hours of nine and five.

Dear Yuyutsu,

Yes ... on 26th August, 1903, at the Sixth Zionist Congress, Bazle, Hertzl proposed the British Uganda Program, but only as a temporary emergency measure because Russian Jews were in immediate danger. He made it quite clear that his ultimate aim was a Jewish entity in the Land of Israel.

The Uganda Program sank without trace.

I can't even begin to get my head around the idea that Hetzl wanted Jews to convert to Christianity. Do you have a reference for this? "Assimilation" is not the same as "conversion".

Dear Danielle,

Of course, if the strategic situation, based purely on military criteria by military experts, demands that a war be carried outside one's country, then it is quite acceptable to do so.

The 1967 occupation is already tainted beyond repair by non-military considerations. Also, while the Palestinians can prove to be quite a nuisance ocassionally, by themselves they carry no significant military capacity as to warrant an ongoing occupation. Once there is a clear border with a wall, and more so once they have significant economic assets on its other side, they will be very careful not to breach that border by missiles and the like because they will know that any such breach will cause an immediate and terrible carnage amongst them.

Israel's real danger lies to its north, led by Iran and its Syrian and Hezbullah deputies. Israel should concentrate its military capabilities on that, rather than on the policing of relatively-harmless Palestinians.

Regarding Herzl, here is a quote from http://www.nytimes.com/books/first/r/rubinstein-herzl.html :

"
This is the substitute to an idea Herzl had before converting to Zionism: a mass conversion to Christianity in order to put an end, once and for all, to Jewish suffering. Because he realized that such a conversion was impossible, he reached the inescapable conclusion: Without giving up Jewish identity, the new solution serves a parallel approach—entering the family of nations not through a side entrance for individuals but through the main gate—as an equal and respectable quest.
"

Also from http://www.jafi.org.il/JewishAgency/English/Jewish+Education/Compelling+Content/Jewish+History/Herzl/The+Doomed+Dynasty.htm :

"
At this stage he was already contemplating a solution for the "Jewish question" in the form of the Jews' mass conversion to Christianity. Trude's birth "reaffirmed Herzl in his resolve to spare his children the agony of their parents," Elon says. He tried to win over the paper's editors for his mass-conversion project, but they rejected it "with derision," Elon writes.
"

Dear Danielle and Yuyutsu,

Thank you both for your candour. It has help contextualise some of the posts I had struggled with.

Dear Danielle,

My father fought in the Malayan Emergency and the city where I lived in the Southern Philippines suffered numerous attacks by Muslim rebels, though the term nowadays is terrorists I think rebels still fits better in their case.

Hardly comparable to your experiences but I remember my school being evacuated after one attack where a dozen people were killed a few kilometres down the beach from where we lived. In response the Mayor, who was a friend of my parents, shot three captured rebels through the head and left their bodies in the town square as a warning.

My school was a military one and there were numerous services for older graduates who had lost their lives in the conflict. For an Aussie kid Asia during that period was surreal and the experiences I gained as teenager served, in some fashion, to sidestep me from my peers in Australia. Hopefully the upside is ability to recognise and acknowledge 'side stepping' in others.

Dear Yuyutsu,

As a teenager, thanks in no small part to Mitchener's The Source, I fell in love with the idea of Israel. Through the years disenchantment replaced idealism, to me the heroic Joan of Arc figure is now just another among the 'fish mongers wives' of the region.

I still hold the Jewish culture and its gifts to the world in very high esteem. However I have not had to shoulder the burden that so often accompanies the 'blessed'. It is a price I don't think I personally would want to pay.

For your sake may your attempts at divestiture bear fruit.

Dear Yuyutsu,

"At this stage he was already contemplating a solution for the "Jewish question" in the form of the Jews' mass conversion to Christianity. Trude's birth "reaffirmed Herzl in his resolve to spare his children the agony of their parents,"

Under the experience of such persecution of Jews it is understandable that Herzl would have contemplated such a solution. One imagines that many Jewish parents have at some time wished to spare their children of such a burden. Certainly Jews sought conversion in Europe when faced with the Nazi regime. So understandable ... but as we now know, so futile.

The Nazi regime traced back though records to find a Jewish forebear. Undoubtedly, many sent to the gas-chambers were unaware that they had any Jewish blood.

The fact that Herzl, himself, did not convert to Christianity, I think, puts this particlar episode into perspective.

As to your comments about Iran etc. I fully concur.

As stated before, I do not believe that Jewish settlers should be permitted beyond the Green Line. They are creating an artificial settler "state", which is diametrically opposed the well-being of the State of Israel. They should be removed back into Israel. If they choose to remain where they are, their presence shouldn't be allowed to influence future decisions as to Palestinian borders. They might well find themselvers ultimately living within a Palestinian state. This would be their choice. One wonders if the messianic Christian religions support the idea of settlers living on the West Bank.